Chapter 29

Mr. Prieur confides in me, and I in him

Etienne Prieur, as he told me, suffered much but could not guess the cause. He had decided to talk to a priest in the Saint-Louis parish, a Mr. Imbert, a former friend of his father. He hoped the priest could find some wise advice for the both of us. I asked him to bring me along with him, of course he knew the faith I had in the ministers of my religion. He turned me down, and said he could take care of anything that might be necessary for our common good, but said that he needed to be there alone. I didn’t press further, but waited restlessly for the results. When I saw Prieur again that evening, he assured me that the priest would use all the means his ministry allowed him to bring us some relief.  

The next day, while chatting with the brothers Prieur, one of them–Baptiste–said to the other, “could you not give yourself the blessings that the good priest would have ordered for you?” “No,” replied his brother. “I’d prefer them come from Father Imbert.”

Several days passed, with no more mention of this virtuous man. I was restless and impatient, the desperate hope of the unfortunate. I had such faith in these two brothers, because of their kindness toward me, the honest people they kept company with, all of this had given me a great confidence in them. They had introduced me to their friends, and we shared with them the strange work Dr. Pinel had made of my mirror, and the inscription I had placed below it to make known the author. 

On the morning of October 24, Etienne came to tell me he was going to Imbert, to beg for some relief from our various woes. Again, I begged to come with him, I could describe my situation better than anyone, nothing left out. . But again, he said that he felt it was best that he pressed our case alone. I consented, but again, waited impatiently for the results. After a long talk with the priest about our misfortunes, Prieur told me the minister had asked him to undertake some working in my apartment, one he could only explain once it had been carried out. 

This confession quite strange to me. After several promises and experiences that had a sad similarity to this one, I had become less trusting, especially with people I only barely knew.  I would never have consented to something like this unless I was sure that I would not be delivered into the hands of an unknown power. I would much rather endure the torments of the enemies I knew than take advantage of a solution that might be displeasing to God. He listened, and seemed to understand my concerns, but assured me that Father Imbert’s intention was only to deliver me from persecution into freedom, and there was no better option for relief. His voice seemed confident, and I let Prieur begin the priest’s invocation

He took my font of holy water, and sprinkled the four corners of my apartment, making the sign of the cross with the sprinkler and reciting a verse from De Provundis. He continued to recite the rest of the psalm in the center of the room, and pronounced the Requiescant in Pace. He assured me then that Pinel, Moreau, the Vandeval woman, and their whole infernal troop were driven out and destroyed by this psalm, unable to harm me. 

Then he took a knife and said, “Gentlemen! You saw what became of Pinel, Moreau, Vandeval, and the others! May the devil do the same to you!” With that, Prieur said, all those wretches were suffering terribly. He repeated the ceremony, calling on the name of the Holy Spirit, and said that it was all over, I was delivered from my persecutors. It all seemed very promising, but he warned us not to celebrate quite yet. We should wait to see the results. 

He found some pots of verbena I kept around the house, and cut them at the stem, making five bundles of them. He placed these at the corner of my apartment, and one more on the piano. “The operation is complete,” he said, taking his knife and plunging it into a piece of wood, repeating his words, assuring me that I could rest, free from torment. I asked him why he had driven the knife so deeply into the wood: this was so that it would be more effective against Pinel, who was now powerless to harm me. 

I congratulated myself on the evening’s success, this triumph against my enemies, the advice of Father Imbert and this fine ritual he had made, that we had performed.  Nothing further would disturb my rest, he said, and took his leave of us.